An unknown subcontinent within Russia

The Far Eastern Federal District shown to the right in the map 

Whenever we read about continents, we tend to evoke seven very familiar masses of land: Asia, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, Africa, and Australia. The definition of a continent is of course arbitrary, nothing more than a helpful convention to group stuff.  By an arbitrary criterion of extension, for example, a territory needs around 7.6 M km² to qualify as a continent (that is the extension of the smallest continent, Australia).

What most people from the Americas (North America and South America) ignore, is the existence of a huge subdivision of Russia that is so large that it can almost be considered a subcontinent in itself.  It is called the Far Eastern Federal District, and its existence is very obscure to westerners, so much that it inmediately caugh my attention. Was there any reason that a place so big is absent from the school curriculum of world geography?  Is it fair to dismiss it as "just another regular Russian region"? The answer is no, it demands a special treatment to account for its differences.

A Federal District is the equivalent of a region in the Russian political division system.  There are eight such districts in Russia, and the largest of them is the enormous Far Eastern Federal District (seen in ochre in the map above). Its extension is of 6.9 M km² (almost as big as the entire USA).  For the most part, it stretches over the territory of Sakha in the Russian Siberia, which is best known for its long winters, permafrost land, and extreme cold weather. 

Russia, a giant in and of itself, its divided into two parts, the European side and the Asiatic side. The Sakha region covers the largest part of the Asian side of Russia, is sparsely habitated, and holds some of the main diamond mines of the country. Basically, Sakha corresponds to a real-world version of the territory North of the Wall in Westeros, the fictional land in Game of Thrones.

The Far Eastern Federal District is such a big mass of land that one of the largest asteroids to ever impact Earth in recorded history, the Tunguska event, hit near there in 1908 with little to none human casualties. This asteroid impact, despite its magnitude and waves felt dozens of kilometers from the impact site, went largely unnoticed because there were no human settlements anywhere near!

The main urban center in the Far Eastern Federal District is actually located in its periphery, all the way to the east: Vladivostok. This city, of 600 m people, is roughly as populous as Las Vegas, Nevada, and lies by the shore of the Sea of Japan. Vladivostok is the terminus of the Trans-siberian railway, the longest railway line in the world. It takes six days to get from Moscow to Vladivostok by train. Oddly enough, the city's extreme oriental location makes it more accessible from Tokyo, than it is from Moscow. 

Vladivostock means "To own the East" in Russian, and it has a fascinating history.  During the 18th century, the Qing Dinasty owned the land where Vladivostok is currently located.  The Qing dinasty was one of the most powerful empires in the world, having a very large population in its time (up to 300 M at its peak). Qing had a lot of Mongol cultural influence and at some of their port cities (i.e. Tianjin) prostitution ramped up.  Qianlong was the most powerful emperor of this dinasty, which made him one of the most powerful rulers of the 18th century.  

So this land in southeast Russia was originally, effectively, territory of northeast China, under the rule of the Qing Dinasty. By the mid 19th century, the Qing Dinasty initiated a war against the British Empire, because they flooded China with heroin and morphine produced in its colony, India. This commodity turned out to be a goldem goose of a business for the british, while obviously having negative repercussion on Chinese people.

The bottom line of Vladivostok origin story, was that the Russian Empire saw a window of opportunity in this opium war that got the Qing Dinasty very distracted. The Russians settled a military outpost into Chinese territory and ended up capturing it, thanks to a later Treaty in which the Qing Dinasty basically ceded it for free! 

Yul Brynner

On the culture of Vladivostok, perhaps one of its most notable natives was actor Yul Brynner. He was born in Vladivostok, and lived there until age eight.  Yul became a famous Hollywood star in the 1950s and 1960s. One of his most famous role was as Ramses II in The Ten Commandments. 

The unknown subcontinent of the Far Eastern Federal District deserves much more protagonism in popular geography teaching.  It is confusing to call people "Russian" without specifying which region are they from, the same as it is confusing to call something "Asian", disregarding if it is from India, Russia, China or Japan.  Let's try to learn more about this new forgotten subcontinent and never put them in the same bag as the rest of Russia.